Google in a Post-Update World: Understanding Key Algorithm Factors

#Ungagged @schachin Kristine Schachinger
Google in a Post Update
& Mobile First World.
Kristine@SitesWithoutWalls.com

Not Bartosz

Zzzzzz …

You wake up to this …

And do this …

(@#*(@#*()##!!!!
(@#*(@#*()##!!!!
(@#*(@#*()##!!!!
%#@!!!! %#@!!!!
And you probably say this about
Google*@#$&*#$&#*

In the days of Matt Cutts, you would go
to Google Blog, Matt’s blog or straight to
Twitter to read the tweets…

WAS THERE AN UPDATE???!!!

WHAT DID MATT SAY????

But that was then …

“I only high-five with my neck in impossible positions.”
image: http://golocalinteractive.com/wp-content/uploads/HighFive.jpg
GARY JOHN
NEW GOOGLE SPOKESPEOPLE
Gary Illyes (@methode)
& John Mueller (@johnmu)

Danny
Sullivan Search
Liaison

They don’t play the same role …

AND …
Google no longer announces updates
on algos like Panda and Penguin
They have been “rolled up” into
the main algorithm(s).
SHHHHHH….
We are NINJA now!

Google in a (MOSTLY) Post-Update World

So when you wake up to this …

Nothing to do.

What do you do?

Or you can use what we know.

Distance from "Perfect”*
how close or far are we
to the points of the algorithms.
*Term coined by Portent

Distance from Perfect.

Know what is in the algo(s).
Then attack your site
“Distance from Perfect”

Distance from "Perfect”!
also equals
FUTURE PROOFING!

Know Your Algorithms.

What algos could be affecting the site?
Process of deductive reasoning!
Internal (on-page, technical, etc)
- Algo(s): Panda, Fred/Quality, Penguin
External (links, citations, etc)
- Algo(s): Penguin
Third Party (advertising etc)
- Algo(s): Panda, Fred/Quality
NOTE these are core algos, there are others.
Algorithms

Know Your Algorithms. Panda.

Site Factors. Content Quality.

A main focus for Panda is EAT

Expertise
Authority
Trust

From the Google Quality Rater’s Guide
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
Quality Site Pages - Content

What does Google thinks makes good content?
The EAT of the page.
• Is there expertise?
• Expertise can = personal experience.
• Is there evidence of time?
• Is there effort?
• Is there skill?

http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-eat/
Quality Site Pages

E.A.T. is really important for
YMYL
(Your Money Or Your Life Content)

http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-eat/
YMYL – Your Money Or Your Life

Panda

Panda focuses on content quality MOSTLY
also some site quality items.
Algorithms - Panda

What is Panda content quality?
No “thin” Content
• Length DOES matter = Time, Effort, Amount
• Exceptions do exist
Be careful of Duplicate Content
• Make sure you have proper canonicals
• No Duplicate Penalty, but there is a filter!
• Make sure your titles/descriptions are unique
Algorithms - Panda

• Content Clarity
• Content Specificity (RELEVANCE)
• Content Length
• Blogs 350-550 << These are arbitrary, BUT they are good guides
• Articles 750-950+ << These are arbitrary, BUT they are good guides
ESPECIALLY for sites that deal with news, information, or education
(Entertainment especially gossip is an exception)
Algorithms - Panda

What else?

• ContentTechnical
• Grammar / Spelling / Readability
• Site Architecture
• Confirmed by John Mueller February 2017.
• Advertisements
• Too many ads on a site can cause devaluations
• This is separate from the Page Layout Algorithm.
• Site LoadTime
• EspeciallyTime to First Byte (TFB)
• Needs to be under .80ms for best results
Algorithms - Panda

Know Your Algorithms. Penguin.

Site Factors. Link Quality.

Google’s original name was Backrub,
based on the system finding and ranking
pages based on backlinks.

.

Links are used by Google to help assess
site “authority” and topical relevancy.
Algorithms - Penguin

Link Profiles

Pay for Play Links.

Along Comes Penguin.

Penguin

Penguin was not just a link spam algorithm it
was an “over optimization” devaluation
based on the Webmaster Guidelines!

Penguin was about web spam, but it was
especially devastating for links.

Penguin 2.0-3.x was angry!

Penguin devalued entire sites!
This was new.

https://goo.gl/images/EdNn4V

Penguin was also slow…
to update

Penguin
- Google Penguin 1.1: March 26 2012
- Google Penguin 1.2 October 5, 2012
- Google Penguin 2.0 May 22, 2013
- Google Penguin 2.1: October 4, 2013
- Google Penguin 4.0: September 23, 2016

- Google Penguin 1.1: March 26 2012
- Google Penguin 1.2 October 5, 2012
5 MONTHS BETWEEN UPDATES
- Google Penguin 2.0 May 22, 2013
6 MONTHS BETWEEN UPDATES
1 YEAR BETWEEN UPDATES
2 YEARS BETWEEN UPDATES
- Google Penguin 4.0: September 23, 2016

You could not recover until the algorithm
ran again.

Penguin Goes Real Time.

Real Time Penguin
RealTime no longer required rollouts to recover.

Penguin 4.0 (Real-time)
Rollout: Approximately September 23, 2016 It also rolled out in several
phases completing these rollouts the second week of October.
Penguin

Focus: Mostly links, but also other Web Spam Factors.
Top Takeaways.
• Confirmed by Google
• Updates are in “real time”
(not the instant they occur, but they are assessed rapidly)

Penguin 4.0 (Real-time)
New version of Penguin was very different from the old in there is not a focus on
whole site website demotion, more granular links devaluation.
In addition the links are being evaluated in “real time” and so changes to link
profiles will be assessed quickly.
(Quick being relative. Can take weeks.)
Penguin

Real Time Penguin
Google switched its link focus to the source site.

Penguin
https://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-looks-mostly-link-source-says-google-260902

Sites are no longer demoted in search, links to it are devalued.

Links are devalued?
This means their value (passed Page Rank) to the site is removed
from the site’s “scoring”.
In the past, the entire site was demoted in the SERPs.
This is no longer the case.

Devaluations are much more granular
• Query Set
• Page Level
• Section Level
• NOT Site Level
This makes them harder to detect as their will be a slower decline in smaller
sections of the site, rather than a distinct fall-off cliff as in previous rollouts.
Also “real-time” application.

Cliff vs. Slope

You can still appear to have a sitewide devaluation.

Without a properly maintained disavow, the site could be
artificially receiving value from bad links before they are
devalued.

This looks like the Penguin devalued at the site level
because the loss of link value.
But it was just being artificially supported.

These link values will have to be replaced
in order to recover.

Off-Site Devaluations
Devaluations can affect you if they hit other sites. If the sites that link to you have
their links devalued, then that “link juice” (ie Page Rank) cannot be passed to
yours.

Link Free for All?
Manual Actions were supposed to take over for Penguin Devaluations, but there is
nothing to indicate they have increased in frequency.

Penguin
Google says there is
no machine learning
in LIVE Penguin, no AI.
https://twitter.com/methode/status/785621866035548160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsearchengineland.com%2Fa-penguins-tale-260981

Penguin 4.0 and Link Labels.

Algorithms – Other Penguin Changes
https://searchengineland.com/a-penguins-tale-260981

Disavow

Do You Need One?

Do you need one?
Depends. Google says you only “NEED” one if you have a manual
action.
But ….
Disavow

Better Question.
Should you use one?
Yes.
Disavow

Why ?
When you submit a disavow the links get internally labeled as such.
Disavow

Preventing Manual Actions.
If you get flagged for a manual action and you have Penguin labeled links that
match the disavow, the reviewer knows to ignore them.
Disavow – Why?

Controlling Link Loss.
If you disavow links, you know when that devaluation will occur (approximately).
This means you can proactively replace the ones you are removing on the chance
they are ARTIFICIALLY SUPPORTING YOUR PAGES.
Disavow –Why?

Disavow
https://searchengineland.com/a-penguins-tale-260981

Disavow
Example.

TIP.
Remember Google looks at the portion of good links compared to the
portion of bad links.
So having bad links is normal.
Having 60%+ bad links is not.
Don’t disavow everything “bad”.
Disavow

Can You Rank Without Links?

Can you rank a site without links?
Depends.
Ranking Without Links

You can rank for long tail queries.

Should you try to rank without links?
Probably not.

Links that aren’t links?

When is a link not a link?
When it is a citation and/or mention.
Citations & mentions can carry “link” value.

https://searchengineland.com/gary-illyes-ask-anything-smx-east-285706

Google is like a human.
If you want a human to remember you, you strategize to get exposure so they see
your name.
Google reacts to brand mentions similarly.
It also can create new keywords/queries for the site.

Is this mentioned elsewhere?
Yes.

Where Google discusses unlinked mentions as ”links”.
- Panda Patent
- Google Quality Raters Guide (in reputation)
And Bing
Duane Forester formerly of Bing mentioned the search engine has been using it for
some time along with brand sentiment.

What else?
Sentiment.

Site Factors. General Quality.

Know Your Algorithms. Phantom.
Now Known as Fred.

Quality Update (Phantom, Fred, Unnamed)
“Panda Plus” witha wider quality focus including UI/X
Summary: Google update that affected sites with low quality indicators.
Focus: Devaluing Low Quality Pages OR Increasing High Value
Top Takeaways.
• Not typically confirmed by Google
• Can change focus – kind of a catch-all of quality algos
• Have to look for other indicators
• Overlaps Panda in some areas
• Can give a boost instead of a loss
Algorithms – Phantom, Fred, Unknown.

Phantom
Quality Update Issues Devalue Sites with these issues.
• Appears to focus on items such as
• Aggressive Ad Placements
• Content
• Crawl Issues
• Deception (ads, affiliate links, etc.)
• Thin Content
• Bad UI/X
• Interstitials
Algorithms – Phantom, Fred, Unknown

Important to note.
These New Quality Updates don’t just
devalue sites, they can just increase value.

Know Your Algorithms.
Quality Technical.

Site Factors. Technical.

Content & Links are the top two ranking
factors, but will add technical here
as the 2.5th

Technical Can Do This!Technical Can Do This!

What are we looking at?

•Http vs. Https
•Robots
•Sitemaps
•Canonicals
•Redirects & 404s
•Architecture
•Navigation
•SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Do the pages have mixed status?
• If pages moved to https, did the URLs change everywhere? CDN?Tag Manager?
Analytics?
• Are the pages redirected?
• Use the Aleyda Solis checklist for https migration
• Robots
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Redirects & 404s
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
TechnicalTechnical

Technical SEO Audit – The Basics
• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Can it be crawled? If not, googlebot goes away!
• Is it written correctly? (test it)
• Are you using it when they should be using no-index?
• Robots.txt blocks the page crawl, but not the URL indexing
• Are you blocking CSS &/or JS?
• Must unblock!This can cause a site demotion.
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
TechnicalTechnical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Do you have one?
• Is it written correctly? (test it)
• Check their sitemaps for
• Limits
• Types (video, image, page, news < different XML)
• Index Sitemaps (use them!)
• TIP Google does not use priority or date modifiers
• Do you have an HTMLVersion? (Mobile First)
• Canonicals
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Do you have them on the site?
• Are they written correctly?
• Do they follow the rules for writing canonicals?
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Are they using 302 or 301?
• Google says they don’t care, but …
• How many 404s?
Are you bleeding links? Should they be 410?
• When redirecting links from removed pages topical matches
are a MUST or the links passed could lose value
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Architecture
• Is the structure vertical or horizontal?
• TIP Google prefers wide and flat over deep and tall
• Are you giving Google a proper content outline?
• Think 10th grade English Class
• Are you specific, certain and clear?
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Architecture
• Navigation
• Are you using proper navigation?
• Are you constructing a contextual view of your site?
• Are you throwing in the kitchen sink?
• TIP Users can only process 5-8 piece of information at a time
• Going to be even more important in mobile first indexing.
• SchemaTagging
Technical

• Http vs. Https
• Robots.txt
• Sitemaps
• Canonicals
• Architecture
• Navigation
• SchemaTagging
• Just do it! Really. Microdata is Google preferred.
• TIP Any data point can be used in the KG without copyright
violation.
• Check Google Search Console for mark-up validity.
• Make sure to add to your mobile site for mobile first!
Technical

Speed.

Speed….
You know fast….
Like really fast…

HOW DO WETEST FAST?
GOOGLE BASEDTESTINGTOOLS
• Google Page Speed Insights
• WebPageTest.org
• Google Analytics
• Google Lighthouse (DeveloperTools)
Page Speed

Google Page Speed Insights
Only measures
FCP (first content paint)
and DCL (DOM content load)
Page Speed – Page Speed Insights

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
Page Speed – Lighthouse

Mobile Page Speed becomes an
official Mobile First Ranking Factor
July 8th!

https://developers.google.com/speed/

Mobile First.

Mobile. Mobile. Mobile.

https://www.statista.com/topics/2479/mobile-search/
Mobile. Mobile. Mobile.

THAT WAS
$1,400,000,000,000
effect on retail sales

http://www.newsweek.com/everyone-plays-their-phone-while-sitting-toilet-688726

70% of Users 18-34 Take Their Phones to Bed ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ……

70% of Users 18-34 Take Their Phones to Bed
Millennials are pretty much terrified to live without
their cellphones nearby. When leaving the house,
about 62 percent of people would rather forget their
wallet at home than their cellphone. Communicating
digitally is preferred over in-person conversations,
with text messages rounding out the best way to chat
with friends.
http://www.newsweek.com/everyone-plays-their-phone-while-sitting-toilet-688726

Mobile. Kind of a Big Deal.

Algorithms – Mobile First
Reference: CindyCrum https://moz.com/blog/mobile-first-indexing-seo

Mobile First Indexing
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

• One Index
• Mobile Crawler will be used for all sites
• Mobile Content will be used for ranking
• Mobile SERPs
• Desktop SERPs
• AMP NOT a factor in mobile first indexing
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

Content you want to rank for MUST be in your mobile site

If you do not have the content on your mobile site, the site
cannot be found for it even in desktop.

If you have a mobile m. site
Make sure to verify this site in Google Search console
• Very important to have your canonicals set up right.
• USE Mobile Moxie’s guide
If you have a responsive site
• No changes needed
If you have AMP only
• You will be evaluated on your desktop content, but mobile friendly boost

UI Hidden Content.
Unlike Desktop, content hidden in accordions and tabs will not
be devalued in mobile first indexing.

Schema.
If you have removed schema in mobile or you do not have it in
mobile, it must be added back to get into the snippets.
If you have responsive design, this should not be an issue.

Link evaluations will be made by taking a combination of your
desktop site, your mobile site (if m.), and your canonicals.

HTML Sitemaps will be key to Google when they can’t
discover the pages through the reduced navigation of
mobile patterning.

Mobile First. AMP.

AMP
Ads & Interstitials
Algorithms – Mobile First - AMP

• AMP will usually replace your Mobile Page
• AMP rankings are based on your site value
• There are no boosts for AMP EXCEPT where a carousel exists
• For news sites, the carousel in Google Organic
AMP PROJECT. you can follow progress https://www.ampproject.org/
AMP & Mobile 1st
What you need to know.
Algorithms – Mobile First -AMP

Mobile First, but not Mobile ONLY
• Desktop users are a powerful purchasing group with more
money to spend.
• Mobile FIRST is often HIGHLY NICHE SPECIFIC
Don’t sacrifice your desktop users.
Some Considerations.

Mobile is affected by the
Context, Location, and your Connection.

Mobile is a Must, but it is not the ONLY Bucket.
Know your audience AND their behaviors.
Do not neglect your desktop users.
Do not assume your mobile users behaviors.

Rank Brain

Rank Brain is used for Unknown Queries.

Rank Brain.
Only algorithm that uses AI
on the live results
Rank Brain.

Google is confused …

Why?
Google does not use NLP
(Natural Language Processing)
Rank Brain.

Uses Entities & Known Relationships
Person, Place, Thing = Noun = Entities.
Nouns or Persons/Places/People/Things are what we call entities. Entities are
known to Google and their meaning is defined in the databases Google references.
Rank Brain.

Rank Brain Uses Users Queries & Clicks
to Help It Understand Query Intent.

Should you optimize for it?
Rank Brain.

Why would you optimize to rank with AI?
Rank Brain.

(Gary Illyes)
Rank Brain.

Just write in natural and conversational language.

Secret Guide to ALL OF THIS.

https://www.stonetemple.com/does-google-use-online-brand-mentions-for-search-ranking-eric-enge-with-gary-illyes-at-pubcon-2017/

Quality Rater’s Guide

Quality Raters Guide

Super Secret Guide to THIS?

http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-international-search-results-conspiracy-theories/

Google in a Post-Update World: Understanding Key Algorithm Factors

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Google in a Post-Update World: Understanding Key Algorithm Factors